Career Change to Farming Series Special 2: The Young People in the Fields - Ashou and Xiaolu
Text by Chen Shu-ting, photos by Huang Shih-tse
"I like places where I can interact with the natural environment." Twenty-nine-year-old young farmer A-shuo, together with his wife Xiao-lu, who is also part of the seventh-grade generation, returned to the small farming village where he grew up to farm. Like the old farmers who toil diligently in the village every day, they rise at dawn and rest at sunset, raising rice, melons and fruit, and the next generation of the two of them. Such a choice is hard for young people of the same age to believe, but in the summer season, the hall where ancestors and deities are worshipped is piled full of rice and honey-scented melons, and everything seems to have its answer...... (Excerpted from the new book "Fields and Trees, Self-Sufficient" published by Guoli Culture in May)
"Fields and Trees, Self-Sufficient"
This book interviews 10 couples who "quit their careers to farm", leaving the city and stable jobs so that the whole family can come to the countryside and live by their own hands and the land. Farming is no longer something to do "after I retire"! Their farming methods are friendly to the land; through their own hands and labour, they produce healthy food themselves, change what the dining table looks like, and make food a force for changing society. These 10 creative practices of farming life are not only a longing for closeness to the land and rural life, but also a gentle yet firm revolution, symbolising a deep shift in the values of Taiwan, China society; they are revolutionaries in the fields.
For more content, please refer to "Fields and Trees, Self-Sufficient"
(http://www.books.com.tw/exep/activity/activity.php?id=0000051175&sid=0000051175&page=1)